I inspire passion!!!!!!!!!!

Well, the smiley faced sun wasn’t there. I added it myself. But you get the general gist. And I’m not being paranoid when I say that the sign was waiting for me personally. I am the “YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE” refered to there by my boss. He frequently leaves these signs lying around the store, covering a wide variety of topics. This is a good rule of thumb in interpreting the importance/severity of these notes:

No exclamation points = General information. (“The new coffee flavor of the month is Jamaican Me Nuts.”)

Here is my defense. Working at a rural convenience store, you get to know your regular customers very well. You come to build up a friendly rapport and, in some cases, even friendship with them. That’s been the case with me and my regular customers (well…most days anyway). And when a customer/friend spends $20+ per day on gas at your place of employment so he can drive dozens of miles to a mill several towns away to provide for his family, you may begin to feel that it would be a kindness to charge him only ninety-five cents for a coffee (the price of a refill), instead of the $1.89 you’re supposed to charge for the 24 oz cup he gets every day to energize him for the drive home. Especially when you know that it only costs the store 37 cents to brew an entire pot of coffee.

Unfortunately, if that customer doesn’t realize that’s what you’re doing, he may balk when someone else charges him full price on your days off. He may complain, thereby giving that kind deed away to your boss, who doesn’t look at “kind deeds” the same way you do, thus inspiring him to leave overly exclamated notes lying around the store for your benefit.

So, Monday afternoon the customer came into the store once more, full of apologies for having inadvertantly gotten me into trouble. I told him not to worry about it. And this time I gave him his coffee for free. Like I’ll do from now on.

In other news, it’s my day at Publishing Renaissance (actually, it was supposed to be yesterday…oops!) Check it out!

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

Published by R.J. Keller

R. J. Keller is the author of Waiting For Spring. An avid independent movie enthusiast, she was Managing Editor of The Movie Fanatic website and created episodes of the writer-centric YouTube series, Inside The Writers' Studio, with author Kristen Tsetsi. She co-hosted Book Chatter with Stacey Cochran from 2011-2014. She lives in Central Maine with her family, where she enjoys gardening, collecting geeky memorabilia, and watching other people cook.
View all posts by R.J. Keller

Post navigation

12 thoughts on “I inspire passion!!!!!!!!!!”

If you were treating the regular customers to cheap coffee at MY store, I’d be giving you accolades for customer-loyalty centred service! I think your boss is, in this regard at least, a d*** (gentleman’s private part).

I like the smiley face sun. Makes it better. Whenever I’ve been offered something at discount (or free), it’s hard for me to accept it. But I see it as an act of kindness, so it’s a good deed and should be appreciated.

I think you need to make a statement with one of the shirts I do up that says: “QUESTION AUTHORITY (Ask me anything)”…

I suppose to be fair, I should mention that the “no free/reduced coffee” rule comes from higher up than my boss (I work at a chain store), but still. What corporate don’t know won’t hurt em, right? (Unless someone from corporate happens to stumble across this blog, in which case I categorically deny giving away free coffee to anyone.)

Lori, this is the kind of teenager I was: nuns hated me, free thinking teachers loved me, and my mom earned each and every grey hair on her head. Poor woman.

Kel – It sounds like your boss is acting out in a very passive-aggressive manner. There is the perfect place for his behavior to be published: http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/.
Those of us (and I know who I am) that are a bit squeamish in confrontation may behave this way. This is sad really. I have modified my behavior, when not relapsed – but others are still in denial. (You know who you are. 🙂 )